


Glass over the Flame

by thegreybeyond



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Canon Compliant, Deathly Hallows era, F/M, Family, Friendship, Post-Hogwarts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-15 21:20:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/854183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegreybeyond/pseuds/thegreybeyond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t say that this is his last winter. He doesn’t say that this could be her last winter. Instead he feels his heart swell with the bruising grip of her hand and the sound of Ron’s snoring in the tent.</p><p> </p><p>Harry, Hermione, and the moments in between.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Glass over the Flame

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my sexy beta, Natalie/hestiajones, and her titillating words of encouragement.
> 
> The title and chapter title are from Hopeless Wanderer by Mumford & Sons.
> 
> Originally posted at Mugglenet Fanfiction.
> 
> Winner of the 2014 Quicksilver Quill Award for Best Non-Canon Romance and 3rd place in the 2014 HP Fanfic Poll Award for Best Harmony Fic - Drama/Angst! Thanks so much!

He has broken his glasses again. She watches him from her bunk as he sits at the table and tries to repair them over and over and over. Her wand looks foreign in his hands, as if it doesn’t fit. Harry points it at the bent frames, at the cracked glass, and she can hear the growls of frustration at the half-hearted sparks that don’t do anything at all.  
  
She thinks about getting up, but she is not sure she can bear to look him in the eyes just yet. The fragments of his own wand seem to be seared across the palms of her hands, raw and open. It’s her fault. It is all her fault.  
  
Her eyes close when he turns, and she must fall asleep because soon he is touching her shoulder to wake her for the night watch. He doesn’t look at her, either. Possibly because his glasses are still broken and crooked on his nose.  
  
From the opening in the tent, she watches as he places them on the ground beneath his bunk, as he rests his head on a pillow and pulls the blankets up to his chin. The air is sharp tonight, and she is glad for it. It keeps her awake, it keeps her alert. It’s like she can hear for miles and miles, and she’s sure when Harry is truly asleep.  
  
The skin of his eyelids ripple from whatever blind nightmare he is dreaming of. His breath comes in soft pants. She holds the broken glasses gently in her hand and sits down on her bunk. The weight of her wand feels so sure and right, and when she whispers those familiar words, as they slip from her tongue and burst forth with a faint shiver of magic, the splinters in her chest seem to disappear.  
  
She hasn’t cried like this since the night he left, when she wore a tee-shirt he’d left behind, wanting to smell him even though there was nothing left but the cloying scent of forest. But it’s the glasses, and they are broken, and Hermione has fixed them for Harry because Ron has gone so she can’t fix him, and she has fat, stinging tears dripping down her nose for hours.  
  
Five days later, when he has broken his glasses again, he brings them to her with a hesitant frown. She takes them, fixes them, and he puts them back on his nose with a thank you.  
  
“It’s going to be all right,” he lies.  
  
“I know,” she lies right back.  
  
  
  
  
Sometimes, Harry wonders if this winter will ever end. It probably won’t for him. It should make him angry that this is the last time he’ll experience the biting cold, that he will never feel the tendrils of spring come creeping through his bones. That he’ll die in this godforsaken winter.  
  
But he’s not angry about that. He’s just angry about the people he will let down--the people who won’t make it to spring, summer, autumn, and winter again, either. Inside the tent he hears Hermione shuffling around. He knows it is Hermione because her steps are lighter, her movements muffled by carefulness.  
  
The clink of two mugs precedes her as she exits the tent.  
  
“Hello,” she murmurs, sitting down beside him. Her hands are wrapped in thick, cream gloves. Her hair is bundled beneath a matching hat, and around her is a blanket that she lifts off one shoulder to share with Harry. They huddle together while she prepares two teas. The steam trails off into the night as if it can’t wait to escape.  
  
“Thanks,” he says, taking a mug from her. His lips are so cold he’s afraid to take a sip, so he waits. She casts a charm over them and the air suddenly feels lighter, warmer. He can breathe without the chill in his chest making it difficult. “You didn’t wake Ron?”  
  
Hermione peers into the trees and shakes her head. “I doubt a Howler from Mrs Weasley could wake him. Well, that’s probably the _only_ thing that’d get him out of bed.”  
  
They laugh before slipping into silence once more. The tea is too hot on his lips but he drinks anyway, unable to wait any longer. He’s parched.  
  
“He’s doing okay, though? I know last time…”  
  
“Last time we were all in a bad place, Harry. This time is different. He’s different. He’s good.” She places a hand on his arm and grips it tight. “We are going to do this, Harry.”  
  
He doesn’t say that this is his last winter. He doesn’t say that this could be her last winter. Instead he feels his heart swell with the bruising grip of her hand and the sound of Ron’s snoring in the tent. In all his years at Hogwarts, he never thought that sound could be so calming.  
  
“I saw you with the map last night. You know she’s not there anymore.” She is talking about Ginny. “But I understand,” she says firmly, “because we both know that I kept searching after… after he left. I think I’d keep looking at the map, too.”  
  
Harry is almost too exhausted to read between her words. Somewhere, an owl hoots making them both jump. When she speaks again, she is softer, more hesitant. He doesn’t hear hesitation in her words that often. It sounds strange.  
  
“What happened, Harry, the night Ron returned? I know I wasn’t going to ask and I know I shouldn’t.” Her eyebrows are furrowed as she stares at her tea. Her hand is still on his arm so he takes it.  
  
“I’m still cold,” he says, smiling at her. “Do you think you could teach me how to make those flames in a jar?”  
  
She sighs and nods her head. He knows she won’t ask again--their friendship is so long now and full of quiet moments like this that she’ll realise there is no point to pressing him further. Summoning a jar from the tent, they go through the steps. Her wand flicks in gentle sweeping movements, demonstrating the way to conjure heat and trap it within the glass. It’s not easy and it takes Harry many tries to get it right. For the thousandth time he is in awe of her, and the fact that she managed to master this back in their first year.  
  
When he has a cluster of flames sending shafts of blue, flickering light across the snow, they are silent, fingers intertwined above the heat.  
  
“It was us. Together.”  
  
He’s not sure where it comes from. He wants to stuff the words back into his mouth, inhale them and choke on them until they do not exist. Her hand tightens within his and then she tries to pull away, but he won’t let her.  
  
“I told him it meant nothing. I told him that I love you like a sister.” He pauses and looks up at her. “And I do.”  
  
Hermione nods. She glances back at the tent, relaxing her hand. Ron’s snores puncture the moment like the blue flames puncture the night. They are warm.  
  
“I know.”  
  
  
  
  
Hermione enters the house alone and it’s beautiful and ugly at the same time. There is a cold familiarity she cannot ignore and it hurts so much that her breath hitches and suddenly she’s choking back tears that threaten to bloom across her cheeks. It’s been three days since she last cried because it’s been three days since she has been alone.  
  
Three days since she watched Ron crouch over Fred’s body in the Great Hall, since every burden seemed to lift for the first time in seven years and new, raw burdens took their place. It’s a balance between heavy and light, she thinks.  
  
Once upon a time, she read that grief is something intangible and moving. Hermione thinks of Harry’s silence and Ron’s broken smile. She thinks of yesterday and how she had to wash her hands five times before pretending to eat dinner.  
  
Hypothesis correct. It surprises her when that thought does not feel comforting. There is something that stops her and that familiar warmth of _knowing._  
  
It’s not like she’s ungrateful, not like she places wish upon wish for things to be different because that is impossible and Hermione doesn’t like to dwell on impossible things. Those things are few and far between and not nearly as interesting as what can be changed, moulded, or fixed. She’s not ungrateful but she’s not happy, either. There is a bubbling, seething darkness that writhes beneath her ribs.  
  
Because now, when Hermione looks at Harry, she finds it difficult to see the eleven year-old boy from the Hogwarts Express with cellotaped glasses and grey, raggy clothes three times his size. She looks at Ron and sees a stolen innocence that will never be replaced. She looks at George and sees half a life; at Molly and Arthur with their displaced hearts, beating for something that will not return.  
  
Life isn’t fair. She’s spent her adolescence fighting against something that ultimately will never change because as one injustice dies, another is born from the ashes. It’s a fact of life. Something that even books can’t teach her. Tangible. Unmoving. It’s a worthy cause but she has no fight left for the moment and it _makes her angry_.She is so angry and there is no one around to tell.  
  
She screams.  
  
It is a harsh, inhuman sound that rips itself from her chest as if it’s not a part of her. She screams, holding onto it until her throat is dry and her ears are ringing. Then she lets go of the mantelpiece, breathes once, twice, three times, and closes her eyes. Her hands fall to her thighs to brush the imaginary dust from her skirt.  
  
There. Done.  
  
She turns around and walks from the room and out into the garden without a glance back. There will be time to return when she has found her parents and brought them safely home. For the moment she has what she wanted, what she needed.  
  
And now Hermione has one less burden to carry.  
  
When she gets back to the Burrow, she finds Harry in the field out the back, staring out towards the hills where Luna and her father live. It feels like a lifetime ago, and when she thinks about it, many lifetimes _have_ ended since they were betrayed by a broken father desperate to find his child. Harry’s eyes are wide and sleepless.  
  
“I’m going to find my parents after the funerals, after I’m no longer needed here.”  
  
She’s not sure he even knows that she’s there; his stare is so intent and unblinking. Then he grabs her hand.  
  
“I know,” he says, and for the first time in three days she can see the boy who conjured blue flames in a jar and smiled at her and thanked her and held her hand in the dark.  
  
“But we’ll always need you.”  
  
  
  
  
  
The platform is thick with steam and laughter and it’s like nothing has changed between now and the first time she stood here seven years ago. As if their world hasn’t been thrown upside down and out of balance and back again, as if the faces that have been lost are still here.  
  
Perhaps they are. Hermione Granger knows that if she looks closely then she will see that everything is wrong. She’ll see the pained frown on a freckled forehead, a scarred cheek, the empty hand of a child. But she doesn’t want to see so she doesn’t look closely at all--just squeezes the hard-soft hand in hers, and smiles at the green-red-golden boy who’s hugging Ginny so tight that she might burst.  
  
Her left hand is grasped tight around Ron’s, Crookshanks’s basket in her right. The basket hisses and spits as she swings it around to give Ron her own farewell hug and he jumps away from her outstretched arms.  
  
“That bloody moggie still hates me,” he grumbles. Harry grins, and Hermione glares at them, shushing Crookshanks. She puts the basket on the ground and reaches out to Ron again, closing her eyes and breathing him in--not sure if she can really let him go.  
  
Then, with a hard kiss--a stilted sigh, a softened moan--he lets her go and turns to Ginny.  
  
“I don’t think Crookshanks hates me as much,” someone mutters in her ear and her head snaps up, tears and all, to smile at Harry. He leans in and gives her a hug. She closes her eyes, breathing him in--not sure if she can really let him go.  
  
“Study hard, Hermione Granger. I don’t want to hear you’ve been slacking off.”  
  
“And you be careful, Harry Potter,” she whispers back. “I don’t want to hear all my hard work from the past year has gone to waste.”  
  
“Not sure we’ll last two days without you.”  
  
“I’m not too sure, myself,” she says with a choking laugh. She pulls back, looking into his eyes that are so green--like a forest, like a tent, like a broken wand and a Christmas wreath--and it’s then that it really hits her, how this year is going to be just as hard as the last despite the fading fears.  
  
A whistle calls them back to the platform. His lips are hard on her cheek.  
  
“Thank you, Hermione.”  
  
She doesn’t have to reply. She knows what he means.  
  
Then Ron’s hands are on her shoulders, pulling her into one last hug, and Molly is crying, and Ginny is trying to find her a tissue, and Arthur is getting the trunks onto the train before it starts to move.  
  
Hermione looks around the platform, breathing in the steam and laughter, and everything has changed but there’s only one direction to move in and that, like the Hogwarts Express, is forward.  
  
  
  
  
  
It’s James’s first birthday and even though the moon rose hours ago and all the young children are asleep upstairs, their parents don’t seem willing to stop the festivities just yet. It’s always like this. Sometimes Harry wonders if it’s because they all lost so much of their childhood, their adolescence--the time when they should be partying and having a laugh--to Voldemort. Maybe it’s another scar, a quiet, unassuming one, which none of them feel like covering up just yet.  
  
Ron and Hermione are laughing across the room. Luna is talking animatedly with Neville. Dean, Fleur, and Charlie seem to be trading Chocolate Frog cards although he must be mistaken because that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?  
  
He slips away after a while, just for a few minutes of space and silence downstairs in the kitchen where his thoughts can stretch without the incessant (and completely welcome) distractions of his family and friends. He thinks he’ll get started on the dishes so that he and Ginny can sleep in tomorrow morning.  
  
Outside, the night is black and heavy. When he glances up at the window all he can see is himself and the kitchen behind him. He lets his thoughts gather, thinking about the day and all the new memories made. The way his son’s eyes lit up when Molly brought out the brilliant orange tiger cake. The way Ginny had leant against him as they opened a mountain of presents while James seemed far more interested in the wrapping paper. The way Hagrid sat down on an unreinforced couch and broke it, twice.  
  
The way his friendly ghosts seemed so close he could almost hear Sirius’s raucous laughter, and Remus’s comforting hand on his shoulder, and Tonks and Fred creating a stir. His mum and dad--they were there, too. They still are.  
  
He laughs into the sink, cheeks warm and shoulders so much lighter now that he’s away from the noise.  
  
It’s winter. Their cat slinks around his ankles with a gentle purr, and he remembers letting him outside this morning only to feel the biting wind on his face. At the time he blanched, covering his lips and nose with his scarf, but now he recalls that night not too long ago when he was facing his last winter. He recalls Hermione’s bruising grip, the conviction in her voice, and Ron’s snoring in the background.  
  
He feels her presence first, before any words are spoken.  
  
“Want a hand?”  
  
“Thanks,” he replies without looking up. She comes to stand beside him, quietly wiping the dishes and putting them back into their respective homes on the shelves with quick and nimble flicks of her wand.  
  
They’re comfortable with silence, now.  
  
He turns around to get the rest of the dishes just as Hermione goes to dry what he’s already washed, wand raised, and lips parted with a silent charm. They bump chests, awkwardly, and he grabs her arms to steady her as she topples backwards into the kitchen table. They pause, so close, breath on breath. For a moment the world stills until it’s just them and the drip-drip-drip of a loose tap.  
  
They can still hear the thrum of voices from above. Harry motions towards the door, a silent question, but she shakes her head and puts the kettle on.  
  
_We could stay here._  
  
“Fancy a cuppa?”  
  
Harry grins and sits down at the table, watching as she moves about the kitchen.  
  
“You always did make a good brew. Even in the middle of nowhere.”  
  
Hermione places the cups on the table, takes his hand and smiles.  
  
“I know.”  
  
It’s only later, when the lights are out and Ginny is breathing gently beside him, breasts bare and hair plastered to the back of her neck, that he wonders what it would be like to go back to the Forest of Dean and grow old.


End file.
